


in so many parts

by stillmadaboutpetra



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, M/M, Not A Fix-It, a vague one, tags aren't that relevant, the mountain scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:21:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24397948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillmadaboutpetra/pseuds/stillmadaboutpetra
Summary: The Mountain sceneHow it could have goneHow it should have goneHow it did go: but we know that already
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 57
Kudos: 296





	in so many parts

**Author's Note:**

> saw a post about instead of 5+1 doing a "could have should have did go" style. Theoretically this would be used for a narrative where we don't know the ending, but we do know how the mountain scene ends. So this is like, musings, i suppose.  
> 

* * *

**How it could have gone:**

Yennefer storms off. She has always had two things before she had her beauty or her magic: a mind and a heart. One kept her alive and one kept all her hopes and aches. She made the mistake of letting the latter lead her to Geralt - or so she thought. It was never her heart swooping or yearning or missing him. It was Fate, a Djinn’s wish, an uncanny pull. She’s smarter than that, stronger than that. A wish? No, a curse.

But Geralt has faster reflexes, fucking Witcher. He grabs her hand to stop her - he has never tried to pull her back when she’s turned her back on him, all those meetings that they ended too soon and not soon enough. She turns, her free hand a claw, magic to make his blood rot punching him in his stomach. He doesn’t drop her hand, holds her tighter.

“Please.”

He looks like a beaten down dog. She wants to kill him. She hates the look on him. She hates the way it reminds her of a mirror she broke hundreds of years ago when she lived off scraps of affection and saw the relentless hunger in her face. She’d tried to kill herself and bled out thinking: I am not hollow after all.

“Your happiness. That was my wish.”

She eases her magic; her head hurts with it, a burn between her eyes as her sinus’s crack like she’s spent too long in the cold.

“What?”

Geralt breathes hard, not from pain but from the great burden of language on his tongue. “I wished that you’d live a long life and find true happiness.”

She laughs in his face. “You expect me to believe that? Happiness? And you think you’d be part of that?”

He looks away, squinting at the low sun. “I didn’t think I’d be part of it.”

“You’re a fool, as foolish as any man to think you’ll be the source of a woman’s happiness. Every time I step into shit, Geralt, I will be sure to thank you.”

He lets her go this time.

She runs into the fucking bard picking flowers. He’s got a mound beside him. They’re barely flowers, more like weeds. Blue and yellow and stiff-stalked daisies. She stops as his side. He looks up, a silly little mortal, digging in the dirt like a child. Dusty, stubbled, growing older every day chasing after his Witcher.

“Leaving him again?” Jaskier asks, mean and knowing and judgemental. He twirls the daisy in his fingers and offers it up to her in jest. “Is it cause he doesn’t bring you flowers?”

She has to look away and her next breath is damnably wet. The stupid bard makes a soft “oh” sound and stands up; he has no right to be so tall. He has no reason to soften at the tears of a witch.

“Do you know what his last wish was?” She asks without knowing she’d ask. Maybe some of her heart has bled upwards, made her stupid. Stupid enough to ask the bard. But he’s known Geralt longer than she, and by his own willful choice. That’s the part that makes her pity him and envy him.

“To save your life. Which, what a waste, full offence, Witch. I’d have thought he’d wish himself free of the princess.” As soon as the words are out, they both know his mistake. Jaskier closes his teeth with a click, tsks his tongue, hums, looks at the flower in his hand, mutters a quiet “ah fuck.”

“His Child Surprise is a princess,” Yennefer says slowly, disbelieving, and then she laughs, not sure why; she smells sea water and storm clouds and dry hay and pig muck; something comes up from her chest, bitterness, a bitter laugh. “He has a daughter.”

Of course it would be a girl.

Jaskier minces beside her, twiddling the daisy, looking at her then away at the cliff drop they’re poised before. “Stay.”

She snorts. “You’re asking me to stay?” He hates her.

He breathes out hard, face twisted, lips pulled into his mouth. He’s so obviously in love with Geralt she wonders if it’d be kind to push him off the edge of this mountain, just to spare his heart.

“He wants you at his side, and you always walk away. I - I - I can’t imagine that,” he licks his lips, looks at her; another kicked dog, another heart skinny on scraps, another pair of bright eyes; Jaskier is so bright, right then, sunset flashing his eyes pale and pained. “It’s Princess Cirillia, Yennefer. I see her every year, for her birthday; Queen Calanthe invites me to play every year for Ciri, and it’s not because she likes music. Well, she doesn’t hate it, I am good at what I do-- but it’s because of Geralt, I know that. He told her he would never come for the child but,” he shakes his head. “He should.”

Yennefer knows exactly what he’s afraid of. “You think Nilfgaard will attack Cintra.” It’s not a question.

“I fear it,” Jaskier says softly. “You and Geralt, you’ve seen the lands changed by war. The religious impetus behind Nilfgaard’s fervor, I’ve read that a hundred times in the histories of the Continent. History is a wheel, doomed to repeat.” He grimaces. “I know Cintra is on Geralt’s mind; he listens too keenly to people’s talk of late. He’s paying attention to the rise and fall of the tides of man for the first time since knowing him.”

“What would you have me do, bard? Go back to him, tell him to collect the Lion Cub of Cintra because we’re suspicious of a siege even though Nilfgaard hasn’t broken past the Southern border yet? That’s his child he’s abandoned, not mine.”

“What is the difference between Geralt’s ties to a child, gifted to him by the parents he saved, a bond of fate, and your tie to him, living the life he wished for you to keep? You abandon him, he abandons a child and everyone’s worse for it!” Jaskier’s crumpled the daisy head in his anger. “Am I the only one who sees your mutual futility? The irony? Will it take a poet to surmise this play?”

“He bound me to him,” Yennefer snaps, her voice a crack of glass. “Even you know it’s peculiar we can’t shake each other.”

Jaskier searches her face, brows knit. “What was his wish, Yennefer?”

She shakes her head. Why is she still on this godforsaken mountain.

“Did he - did he wish you’d love him?” Jaskier can’t hold her eyes. He regards the crumpled petals in his hand, the head pinched from the stem. They are all love-me-nots.

“The idiot wished I’d be happy.”

“With him?”

“No.” No he hadn’t, had he?

“What would make you happy? That’s a - that’s a very vague wish. He really used his last wish asking the great powers of Chaos to make you happy? That fucking...idiot. It could have been anything - it could have been, like, everyone to die a violent death.”

“A little girl.”

Jaskier looks at her again, words cut from his tongue. Yennefer never said it out loud, not like that. She’d always said a child, or her womb, her right, her choice. To Geralt, she’d told the half-truth, the source of her agony and desire: to be important to someone. To Tissaia, she said her legacy.

She should have pushed the bard off the mountain.

“Witch,” Jaskier says very quietly, very softly. It’s a very sorry sound. He’s never one for a single word, though, never the one to let the scab heal without rushing it to scar. “Geralt thinks Destiny is only applied in circumspect, just a load of horse shit. Said as much to the Queen herself, spat in the face of Destiny; Destiny has one hell of a sense of humor to tie you two together, huh?” He steps back, rubbing his fingertips together nervously, swinging his arms in his retreat. He looks at the sunset again. “Red sky. Calm seas.”

He gathers his flowers and his weeds, more green than blossoms, but they’ll be hardy, durable; they’ll die slowly. They’ll die all the same.

“What’s all that for?”

“The dragoness. She deserves some honor, doesn’t she?”

He’s humming, when he turns away. It’s the same melody he’s been humming the whole hike up the mountain. He disappears into the cave, the chamber of it echoing his voice as he finally sings. All she hears is, “I’m weak,” over and over. No, she thinks, no, you’re just living by your heart still. It’s the bravest way to suffer.

Geralt’s standing at the edge of the cliff, posture so stiff and wound she could snap him with a touch.

“We’ll just run into each other again,” she calls to him. She’d used magic to make her tread silent, her scent vanish, her heart to stop its relentless beat. She’d wanted to scare him. It’d worked; he whips around, shocked as she’d never seen him; she lets life return to her body, all the sounds and smells of it, the blood of her hot and strong. She has so much life in her.

“Yen.”

“You are not my happiness. You are not what I desire. I have turned away from you for years. How could I have done that if you were my happiness?” It’s magic that brings them back together but not magic that makes her glad to see him. He lets her step into his space, bowing his head to hers, pressing their foreheads together and inhaling deeply, regret and timid hope lining his face. It’s a better look on him. Let him suffer. “I want to see her.”

He knows who.

Geralt goes to collect Jaskier from the dragon’s lair. He’s singing to Vèa and Tèa, the three of them sitting near the egg. He doesn’t want to interrupt, wants to let him finish. He’s not sure if he’d call it a lovesong; it sounds too much of hurting.

Borsch finds him there, watching. “I haven’t lost her yet,” Geralt says, unable to keep the smugness from his voice.

“Destiny has her ways.”

“Hmm.”

“Some things she has no part in; life’s little gifts.

Jaskier finishes his song. Geralt steps forward, eyes tracking the scraggly flowers tucked around the dragoness’s felled form. The egg glows gold and soft.

“Jaskier, ready?”

Jaskier squints in the low light of the cave. He smells like dried tears. He’s grown the heart to mourn for creatures neither monster nor man.

“Did she stay?”

Geralt hides his surprise. He doesn’t like being surprised this much in one day. He likes it least when Jaskier’s the one doing it. Suspicion crawls across his skin. “Yes.”

Jaskier nods knowingly. “About time.” He thumbs a note on his lute. “I think I’m going to stay awhile; Vèa and Tèa said they’d escort me down the mountain.”

The Zerrikanian warriors nod, one to Jaskier, one to Geralt. Geralt smirks, shaking his head, relieved. Good. Good.

“Where will you go after this? To peddle a dragon song to the king at his wedding?”

Jaskier smiles dimly. “I try not to play weddings anymore. No; I think I’ll rest my weary feet a little. It’s tiring, walking the Path with you.”

Geralt’s good humor leaves him. He wonders at the squint of Jaskier’s smile, the lines at his eyes that Yennefer had thrown in his face. “Oxenfurt?” he guesses.

“Maybe. I’m thinking about the coast.” And then, softly, “you’re welcome to join me. Always will be, Geralt.”

Geralt’s taken so much of his mortal life already. “Will you play for her birthday this coming year?”

Jaskier knows who.

“I’m not the sort of man to disappoint a queen and a princess. She’s my biggest fan, you know.”

Geralt nods. Stands there, Jaskier looking up at him, smelling of grief, red-eyed from weeping. Geralt hadn’t noticed the thinness of his voice. “Yennefer and I will be there.”

Jaskier smiles, this time a little brighter. “I’m going to tell everyone you’re my second biggest fan.”

“Hmm.”

He’s still standing there, too long, unsure. They leave each other all the time. Jaskier’s smile slips and he looks away. “See you around, Geralt.”

“He’s not coming?” Yennefer asks, when Geralt walks out of the cave’s mouth, no bard in tow. Geralt steps up beside her, saying nothing. “Finally using his head,” she mutters. She wishes she could say the same for herself. Geralt gives her a questioning look but he never looks hard enough, does he?

She makes a portal.

* * *

**How it should have gone:**

Jaskier doesn’t say “right” or “see you around” or anything about finding out the story from the dwarves or the Zerrikanian or Borsch. He watches Geralt turn his back to seethe, righteous in his heartache, his struggle against Destiny, his poor luck. Jaskiers worries a hole into his finger, thumb rubbing furiously, skin hot and sticky with sweat and grime. He tilts his head back like that might keep the tears from falling but all it does is rush them loose, burning, catching sweat along his eyelids so it hurts all the worse. He should be better, he should be angrier, he should walk away.

Geralt’s always angry after Yennefer leaves; he yells sometimes. He gets reckless in the next fight. He pulls this bullshit. It’s not new necessarily, but it's worse than before. It's the worst it’s ever been. Last night had been the first time he didn’t come back to Jaskier too. This is the worst it’s ever been, and Jaskier had watched it happened, knowing how this song and dance would end.

Almost knowing.

Twenty-two years of friendship. Twenty-two years. He’s spent more of his life with Geralt than without him. Maybe that’s nothing to a Witcher. Jaskier knew he wouldn’t be a long chapter in Geralt’s life, but surely his story wasn’t over yet. He wasn’t ready for it to be over yet.

Not after asking Geralt to step off the Path, just for a little, with him. To tarry, to meander, to take a break and learn why the salt breeze cures all ails, even broken hearts. The sea and tears taste the same after all.

His crying crescendos unbidden and Jaskier hiccups to catch his breath, hot with shame at the sound that comes from his lips. He scrubs a hand across his face, gasping into his sleeve, pressing his forearm across his eyes as hard as he can until the darkness behind his eyelids jolts with colors and light from the pressure. He shouldn’t be crying. He is anyway.

“Don’t waste your tears on me, Jaskier,” Geralt says, voice still too low, too mean. The words could have been gentle but weren’t.

Jaskier huffs into his sleeve, takes great big ragged breaths through his mouth and blinks until his eyes stop weeping all over his face. He licks his lips, tingling, hot and tired. Exhausted. He’s so tired. Twenty-two years.

“They’re for me, you selfish fuck,” Jaskier chokes out, voice caught on a sodden pain stopped up the back of his throat. He thinks it's heartbreak making him sick with each swallow.

“I am a selfish fuck,” Geralt agrees. His feet crunch on stone and dirt as he stalks towards Jaskier.

Jaskier stumbles back a step as Geralt lays upon him in a few strides, the distance between them eaten away. Geralt’s miserable face draws up to him, his leather clad arms encirling him. Geralt embraces him swift and firm, a hard kiss laid upon his brow. It betrays them both.

“I would be cruel to be kind to you, my friend,” Geralt murmurs. “Go to your coast, Jaskier.”

* * *

**No: It should have gone:**

Yennefer brings Geralt to his knees. Roche lets her, though he stands, a ripple of gold and twilight in the corner of her eyes. He is dragon enough to know the fire of her heart.

Jaskier is stupid enough to hurl down from his perch, like he’s the savior, like he’s sung the songs enough to know the motions of how to fight, to play knight. So she takes him to his knees too, backing up slowly while Geralt grimaces in pain and pleads with his eyes, a grunt of “Yen,” like they’re in bed, her bed. How dare he.

“You bound me too you,” she spits. “I’m older than you, Witcher, more powerful than you, shall always be. And you wished yourself into my heart?”

She feels it then, Jaskier’s struggle gone from his body; the magic clench she has on his spine abates because he’s no longer wrestling against her.

“Really?” he snarls at Geralt, throwing himself at the Witcher furiously. “You wished yourself upon her?”

Funny; that’s the last person she thought would be angry on the behalf of her honor.

* * *

**No. Not that either. It should have gone:**

Jaskier doesn’t say anything stupid this time, doesn’t try to cheer the mood. He watches Yennefer march away from Geralt, her back to him; how Geralt doesn’t try to stop her, too guilty. She comes close to Jaskier, smelling of flowers and sweat and charred paper and bone. Yennefer of Vengerberg smells like a goddamn pyre.

She stops, just long enough to block his vision, to become everything before his eyes; her cloak, he realizes, is made of wolf pelts. He knows she bought it on purpose. She’s that sort of woman.

“How lucky, to know that you love him by choice.” If anyone asks her, she will pretend as though she hadn’t known Geralt would be able to hear her.

Jaskier blinks up at her, those boy-blue eyes of his heavy with the burden of too many years on a path not meant for humble bards.

“Doesn’t feel lucky most days,” he says, smiling as if his mouth only knows one way to fit his face; she remembers those courtroom smiles. She remembers what it looked like to not know the snarl of oneself.

“How lucky he is to have your loyalty,” she decides. “Try not to go gray before I see you next, bard,” an insult and a salute at once. She opens a portal, vanishes, leaving behind her usual wreckage.

Geralt does an admirable job imitating stone. He’d make a lovely rock if not for the tell-tale clumping of his eyelashes, the smear of them betrayed in the broken crease of dirt streaked across his face where he’d wiped his eyes. Jaskier gives him his peace, his thin dignity, and returns to camp, packing what little they brought up the mountain. Geralt finds him eventually, hunched, like the loss of Yennefer has taken a bone from him and he can no longer bear his own weight.

It’s fine. Jaskier will help him bear it.

“Let’s get far from here, Geralt. I don’t want to be in this kingdom when the wedding comes. Too morbid and if I’m in realm they’ll ask me to play. They’ll sniff me out, Master Bard for hire they’ll think; I can’t be too available, I’ll lose the charm of mystery. Supply and demand, my dearest, you must understand, we the rare species and such.”

He stands in a shove that puts him right before Geralt, eye to eye with him. All the time, he thinks Geralt’s bigger than him, but he’s not, is he? Every time it surprises him.

Geralt touches his wrist, his hand, as he takes one of the bags from Jaskier. “What were you saying about the coast?” Geralt asks, turning them towards the slope of the mountain to descend together. "Fuck mountains."

* * *

**How it should go, maybe:**

He says “that’s not fair,” and takes the rest, the vitriol and the misplaced anger and the fear that’s rolling off Geralt because he loves Yennefer, doesn’t know how, doesn’t think he should - definitely doesn’t think he should or could or will get the chance to try again. Jaskier lets him curse and roil and turn away to stand alone, cast against the mountain, the image of the lonely Witcher.

He could push - oh not Geralt, well, he could try to push the Witcher off the edge of the cliff, serves him right - he could march up to him and, and, yell back. He could do a lot of things.

So he tells Geralt, brave only because his back is turned to Jaskier: “I love you.”

His words are a bleeding thing between them, a wounded thing. His heart is its own animal crawled from his chest, an old dog sneaking off to die out of sight.

“Don’t,” Geralt says. He hunches his shoulders, hands fisted by his sides, starring down the deep drop before him. “You shouldn’t.”

But he does. And he shall.

“All these years, Geralt. I’ve loved you. Every day, even at your worst, even now.”

“Don’t,” Geralt says again, weaker, warning.

“You’re my best friend, Geralt. And I’m yours.”

Geralt finally turns at that, the slits of his eyes as thin as thread, his mouth even thinner. “I’m a piss poor friend.”

“You’re just fucking stupid,” Jaskier says. “And a mean bastard. Bit ripe smelling too.”

Geralt snorts, shaking his head. “Jaskier.” He looks away, back, forcing himself to meet Jaskier’s wet-eyed gaze. “I don’t deserve your love.”

Jaskier tosses up his arms, at a loss. “Well - congratulations. You have it. You have my whole fucking heart, mangled it up just now, by the way.”

Surely Geralt can see it bleeding. Geralt nods, like yes, yes, I see it I smell it, I can taste it in the air.

“I’m sorry, Jaskier. You are--” the apology is a surprise enough; Jaskier thought Geralt would just shrink back and pretend it never happened, and now he’s working himself up to more words, a second unprecedented shock, “I would not see you ruined by walking the Path any longer with me. You would be better to leave while you still can.”

Fool. He already is. He never was.

“Eh,” Jaskier says, tongue flicking out to wet his burningly dry lips. “I’d probably just be bored.”

He thinks Geralt mutters a brokenly fond “fucking bard,” before striding up to meet Jaskier on the lip of the rock. His forehead meets Jaskier’s in a heavy thunk as Geralt reaches up to hold Jaskier’s face to his with two leather-hot hands. Jaskier keeps his eyes open even though Geralt shuts his, unable to look away. Geralt doesn’t say anything, not for the rest of the day, barely anything the whole walk down the mountain. He keeps Jaskier closer than he ever has, keeps watch over him as never before, because eventually something or someone will take Jaskier from him; Geralt had tried to kill what was between them, a blow of mercy and fear, and all he did was hang on tighter, resigned to watching it die a slow death.

* * *

**How it will never go:**

"Just trying to work out what pleases me."

The moments heavy but Geralt huffs a laugh, slanting his eyes at Jaskier, so sure of his tease. "And I please you?"

Jaskier smiles, just barely, has to work his tongue around the weight of his heart heaved into his mouth. "Yes. More than anything or anyone in the world. Surely you," oh gods he said it, "surely you know that by now."

He'd confess again, wishes he could, so he could take the time to properly appreciate the warm disbelief shock on Geralt's face, the sudden widening of his pupils, the gobsmacked look on him. It's a rare treat. It's depressing too, that he's shown Geralt his love for two decades and it still surprises the Witcher to be thought of tenderly. Jaskier doesn't have much time to muse on it because Geralt's suddenly right there, warm breath against his lips, a hand on his. Jaskier closes the distance before he can think twice. Geralt flinches and Jaskier almost shatters at the space that slips between their lips before Geralt's pressing back, cupping his face, chaste and urgent at once.

"How are the winters on the coast?" Geralt rumbles, so close Jaskier's teeth ache with the sound.

* * *

**How it does go:**

Terribly.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven’t really written yennefer and that’s a shame.  
> If you liked, check my other works.


End file.
